Word: treks
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...favorite Star Trek episode is called "Cause and Effect." Here's the setup: the crew members of the Enterprise (the Enterprise-D, since we're in Next Generation here) are trapped in a time loop. They repeat the same sequence of events over and over again. At the end of each loop, the Enterprise is destroyed in a catastrophic collision with another ship, and they go back to the beginning. But with a subtle difference: each time they go through the loop, it leaves behind dark trace memories, so the next time around, the crew is haunted by a sense...
...other ship. Plus, the whole conceit is brilliant. It's like one of Philip K. Dick's epistemological passion plays: we watch the same scenes four times, almost word for word, and they mean something slightly different each time. (Watch TIME's video, "How To Be a Star Trek Scribe...
...Cause and Effect" could be a metaphor for the whole Star Trek franchise. Each new version - and to date we've had five Trek TV series and 10 Trek movies - repeats the same basic scenario, but each iteration is burdened more and more heavily by the past, and each one ends in collapse. Then the loop starts all over again, but with that sense of looming doom one notch darker. Even I, a fan, am surprised that Star Trek is still with us after 43 years...
...thought it wasn't. I thought it had died in 2004, after the double deathblows of Star Trek: Insurrection (the second-to-last movie; I considered Nemesis just posthumous galvanic twitching) and the uneven last series, Enterprise. Now an 11th Trek film is nearly upon us - it opens May 8 and is helmed by J.J. Abrams, the unstoppable force behind Alias and Lost - and I'm torn between horror, that someone is defibrillating the beloved corpse of Trek one more time, and, in spite of all my better instincts, hope...
Northern Lights. Alaska's Denali National Park has an Air-Land-Sea package at three lodges: Grande Denali Lodge (available May 17 to Sept. 14), McKinley Chalet Resort (May 12 to Sept. 20) and McKinley Village Lodge (May 26 to Sept. 15). Trips include a rafting tour, a trek to spot moose and other wildlife, and a helicopter ride around the park giving you a panoramic view of Mt. McKinley. Book by May 1. Rates start at $729.50 per person for two nights...